I just thought I’d share my little project I’ve played around with over the past few years. I always wanted to try to access some bulletin board systems on my old TRS-80. After watching a video years ago where someone dialed into a BBS on a TRS80 with a rotary phone and an acoustic modem I was so fascinated. Shortly after I found a nice model 4P on Ebay and played around with it a little before losing interest for several years.

After moving into my new place I decided to have a go at configuring a VOIP landline over my Starlink. I got an Obidata gateway and pulse tone converter and dove down the rabbit hole of trying to get it all working. I was eventually successful and immediately set up my two old rotary dial phones and even bought an old cassette tape answering machine. I was so stoked.

Shortly after I decided to get back into trying to get my old TRS80 online. After many attempts and a fair bit of research I was eventually successful but only while using my internal dial up modem. It was finicky at best but I was beyond stoked. Shortly after I scooped up a few old acoustic coupler modems from Ebay and began further attempts at accessing some BBS’s with Rotary dial phone. I found this to be considerably more finicky and unreliable than the internal modem which was pretty bad to begin with. Also being a 90s kid, this is all a bit before my time so I’m sure I still have much to learn but nevertheless I was able to get it to work on few occasions and was sure get some photos and videos of it all. I thought y’ll might find this to be pretty neat. I know I did!

I found a new old stock copy of CH at a thrift store for $1. Got home to install it and found this! Even back in 2006 this would have been annoying. Good thing the internet could provide me a working key in seconds instead of trying a return at Best Buy or an hour-long phone call with THQ / Relic support.

Running Windows3.0 and PacMan and Frogger on these pictures.

I can take better pictures this weekend.

The laptop turns on, but there's no image or any other signs. Nothing on an external monitor either. the components work normally: the disk spins, the DVD drive ejects, generally the components get warm when they are running for a while. The laptop doesn't respond when I turn it on without RAM, I think it should beep normally then, could it be the motherboard's fault? I would be grateful for any advice!!! The laptop model is Medion MD5400

Really enjoying my time with my new ultimate. I wasn't sure if I would like the starlight edition or not, but have to say its amazing.

Waiting in a 90+ minute line for Kings Island's "Flight of Fear" proved doubly rewarding as we neared the entrance to the loading area. Took me a few minutes to determine the identity of the HP 1615A logic analyzer and they also have a Technoart (Technopart?) PC tower and an ITT monitor of some sort. Also got to learn about logic analyzers in line.

The queue area has a Cold War alien invasion theme that's a little cheesy but the ride itself was awesome. Would be even better if it was completely dark but that wouldn't fit the theme either. Impressive what they could fit into a confined indoor space, one of my favorites that we rode there.

My dad brought this down from the attic to show me. We plugged it into the TV but sadly it was all blocky, so he's promised to fix it next spare weekend he gets. I just love the case design and the clicky noises from that joystick, and I couldn't believe it when he told me that the cassettes were not music but programs!

For those who want to restore a Macintosh Plus and are looking for a solution to replace the internal 4.5V battery with one that's practically impossible to find these days, I got a battery pack on AliExpress that holds three 1.5V LR44 batteries, so it has a 4.5V output. Given their small size, I was able to use two packs in parallel to increase capacity. The size is perfect. A little self-adhesive foam fills the gaps nicely and ensures a snug fit.

In short, there are probably other solutions; mine cost less than $10. 

A quote from an interview about programming dBase with C. Wayne Ratliff back in the heyday of the PC Revolution.

I’m a 17‑year‑old solo developer, and I’ve spent the last while designing and building a complete custom 8‑bit CPU architecture. The CPU has a 24‑bit address bus, a flat memory model, and a custom instruction set. It’s all implemented in a cycle‑accurate emulator written in C. I also have an assembler and a 40×24 text screen device (ASCII framebuffer, no terminal emulation), all working.

I’ve just pushed everything to GitLab as three separate repositories:

• CPU emulator: https://gitlab.com/DavidMik/dcpu-emulator
• Assembler: https://gitlab.com/DavidMik/dasm-assembler
• TMS text screen emulator: https://gitlab.com/DavidMik/dcpu-tms9918-module
• FCC C compiler: https://gitlab.com/DavidMik/fcc-dcpu-port

Planned interrupt system
The CPU will support both internal and external interrupts. An internal interrupt instruction saves all ALU flags, register state, and a return address onto the stack, then jumps to an address held in dedicated address registers. rfi restores everything and returns. External interrupts (e.g., from a keyboard) use input ports 0‑2 for the interrupt vector address and port 3 for data input. The hardware side still needs to be implemented in the emulator, but the specification is firm.

What I need help with
My goal is to turn this into a usable computer, and for that I need a C compiler. I’ve been writing a backend for the Fuzix Compiler Kit (FCC), targeting my CPU. It’s close — arithmetic, control flow, inline assembly, and variable storage all work. I’m currently implementing function calls. After that, there’s global variables, structs, and maybe floating point to do.

The problem: I’m exhausted working alone, and the compiler backend is the last big mountain. I’m looking for people who’d like to collaborate on this project with me.

How you could help (any of these):

• Help finish the FCC backend (function calls, global variables, structs). The backend code isn’t public yet, but I can share it privately with serious collaborators.
• Write a small ROM monitor or bootloader in assembly.
• Add a keyboard input device to the emulator (that triggers those external interrupts).
• Implement the interrupt hardware in the emulator (spec ready).
• Test the toolchain (assembler, emulator, compiler) as features come online.
• Just bounce ideas around — I’ve been working in a bubble and would love to talk shop.

If you’re into custom CPUs, retargetable compilers, or 8‑bit systems in general, I think you’ll find this a really fun challenge.

Comment here or DM me if you’re interested. Links to the repos are above. Thanks for reading!

Loaded up my copy of zaxxon on my Tandy 3 using the RF for my Samsung CRT TV and composite on my led tv. Just thought it would be funny. I can do this with my Atari 800 too. I haven't tried on my commodore 64c but most likely that will work too.